We had to make a difference. Exit the Transamazonian. Turn north and take a new road for 70 kilometers, the BR 319, even more rugged, where our 4 × 4 progresses with difficulty. The game is worth the candle. The day before, a contact, whose name we will withhold for security reasons, offered to take us to the “front line”. “You want to see trees fall? Well I’ll show you some! », he promised, boastfully. Appointment was made at 8 o’clock in the morning. Near a wooden shack, a small dirt road goes deep into the jungle. In the distance the sound of chainsaws pierces.
This forest deserves. She doesn’t like intruders. To enter it, you have to cross muddy swamps, water up to your knees, climb huge piles of wood, cross thorny bushes. The branches scratch the face, the splinters sink through the leather of the shoes. Reptiles, leeches, tarantulas, scorpions, poisonous frogs, spotted panthers… the danger can come from the ground but also from the air: certain snakes, such as the emerald boa (two meters long), sometimes pounce on their prey by dropping from Branches.
“It’s good guys! It makes you exercise! »laughs our guide who, after forty-five minutes, stops suddenly in front of a wall of foliage. “I think I got lost…” The din of the chainsaws may well be getting closer and closer, but it’s impossible to go any further. Better Turn back. Returning to the starting point, exhausted, here we are dripping with sweat, red faces and bloody feet. Discouragement awaits. We are preparing to leave empty-handed. When, suddenly, a miraculous being appears: a young mestizo in a cap and a pink T-shirt, machete in hand! ” My brother-in-law ! », launches our guide. He knows where the loggers are.
In less than ten minutes, we are at their side, five men in white helmets, covered in sawdust and splinters. “You’re not from the police, are you? », asks one of them, in a joking tone. In the chaos of the jungle, positions are strictly distributed. The chainsaws (“chainers”) cut down the trees, assisted by a cook at the meals and a syrupy (“greasy”), responsible for the supply of gasoline. Everything else is done with small, meticulously greased orange chainsaws. On one of them, an inscription: ” God is faithful. »
Desperate Revenge
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